Pankaj Kumar's Weblog

The book is almost complete and will soon be gone to production.

It would be good idea to setup a website complementing the book. In fact, I have already got a fitting domain name and parked it on a friend's box. Have a Linux box up and ready on my HOME network, waiting to go live (Thanks to LinkSys router -- it would take me less than a minute to configure it for open access from the Internet). However, I am stuck at this point.

I am not able to decide what CMS (Content Management System) or CP (Collaborative portal) should I use to setup this site. I would like it to be open source software, preferrably based on Java/J2EE. Here is what I would like to be able to do:

1. Allow download of the sample examples and tools.
2. Maintain a live FAQ.
3. Allow reader registrations.
4. Answer reader questions.
5. Post product evaluation reports.
6. Allow reader comments and ratings.
7. Publish a monthly/quaterly news letter.
8. Aggregate content related to book topics.
9. Post articles/writeups on related topics.
10. Provide search.

This list may change as I work on this site but the basic idea is to have some more dyanmic than my static home page or even somewhat dynamic weblog.

After a brief session with Google, I short-listed following software for evaluation:

• CoFax


• Apache Lenya


• OpenCMS


• OpenSymphony


• JLCP

I installed CoFax and played around a bit. Not too happy with it.

Read the details about OpenSymphony but looks like it provides low level components and expects signficant plumbing. java.blogs, which uses OS components, is impressive but I do not have the time or energy to learn a bunch of APIs even before I get started.

Am yet to look at others. Are there folks out there who are running such systems and would be able to recommend me something.